How man from North Yorkshire aged 25 created £2.5bn firm and is worth $1billion
James Dacombe from Harrogate now has a business worth £2.5billion (Image: Linked In)
A North Yorkshire-born entrepreneur who dropped out of college now has an artificial intelligence company valued at around £2.5million, along with government backing.
James Dacombe, 25, is the founder and chief executive of London-based Olix, which was launched just two years ago and develops specialist AI chips designed to improve the speed and efficiency of artificial intelligence systems.
Dacombe grew up in Harrogate, attending Ashville College before studying at the St Aidan's and St John Fisher Associated Sixth Form.
September-born James began teaching himself computer programming from a young age, building apps and websites at 13 years old.
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He famously dropped out of sixth form after just two days, to take up a scholarship from Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who founded businesses including PayPal and Palantir. The scholarship supports entrepreneurs creating their own projects or businesses outside college.
The Yorkshireman launched his own business CoMind in 2018, a London-based brain monitoring company. He remains its chief executive.
James launched Olix in 2018, which media reports say had grown to a $1billion in February 2026, when the start up raised $220million.
James Dacombe is worth $1billion
(Image: Linked In)
Olix has further raised $312 million (around £232 million) in Series B funding, tripling the company's valuation to $3.3 billion (around £2.5 billion) in just six months, the company reported this week.
The valuation is said to have created one of the country’s newest ‘unicorns,’ that is a privately-held startup worth more than $1billion. It is increasingly seen as a potential alternative to US-based Nvidia, which has a market capitalisation of $5 trillion.
The investment round was backed by big names including Arm, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Fundomo and the UK Government's Sovereign AI Fund.
Olix is developing specialist AI "inference" chips, designed to run artificial intelligence models more efficiently and cheaply. Its first chip platform, called DX-1, is due for launch next year.
James told the Financial Times: "We are on track to be the fastest company to go from founding to full chip tape out of any company in this space."
The latest investment will allow Olix to grow its engineering teams across the UK and North America while accelerating development of its AI hardware.
According to reports, Dacombe remains one of Olix's largest shareholders through his holding company, with his stake now valued at more than $1 billion.
Announcing the government’s support last week, AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said: “The future of AI will be built on chips that power models. Countries that build chips will build leverage.
“OLIX is exactly the kind of ambitious company we want to back through Sovereign AI. In just two years, it has established itself as one of the UK’s most exciting AI startups, developing breakthrough chip technology with the potential to help shape the future of AI.
“If we want Britain to lead in AI, we need to back the technologies that sit underneath it. That’s how we’ll attract investment, create high-skilled jobs and ensure the UK remains a country that builds the future of AI, not just uses it.”